In current times, the issue of security has become a significant concern. We strive to keep secure our homes, automobiles, credit cards, wallets, and purses. With the prevalence of electronic devices in our lives, controlling access to electronic devices has also gained great importance. On a daily basis, we often seek to limit access to our computers, be they home, office, desktop or laptop, bank automatic teller machines (ATM machines), as well as other devices. Further, with regard to entertainment devices such as televisions, video cassette recorders (VCRs), video disk players, and video games, parents often desire to limit the access of children to all or portions of these entertainment media used with these devices. Limiting control to these entertainment devices, for example, often takes the form of so-called parental locks.
Many of the methods used for limiting access to an electronic device may be unwieldy and cumbersome to use, and require manual input from the authorized user. Also, while these methods provide a way for a user to establish authorization for initial access to one of these devices, no method is provided for automatically limiting or denying access to the device once initial access has been granted. This scenario occurs if the original authorized user temporarily or permanently steps away from a device or, in the alternative, if an unauthorized user attempts to use the device along with the authorized user, but without the permission of the authorized user.